September 23, 2014 AT 12:00 pm

The National Security Agency has some of the brightest minds working on its sophisticated surveillance programs, including its metadata collection efforts. But a new chat program designed by a middle-school dropout in his spare time may turn out to be one of the best solutions to thwart those efforts.

Prompted by Edward Snowden’s revelations about the government’s intrusive surveillance activities, loosely knit citizen militias of technologists and security professionals have cropped up around the world to develop systems to protect us from government agencies out to identify us online and grab our communications.

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